


Those Like You Who've Lost Their Way

by silverlining99



Series: Hunters [2]
Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-04
Updated: 2010-06-04
Packaged: 2017-10-29 17:03:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/322141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverlining99/pseuds/silverlining99
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And they meet again. Includes vampire iterations, unorthodox medicine, and something resembling a truce.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Those Like You Who've Lost Their Way

**Author's Note:**

> Continues to exist in the Supernatural universe, knowledge of which would be handy through this series. Title from Neko Case's "Deep Red Bells."

It takes him more than two hours on back roads to make it to the outskirts of Mojave. He drives hunched forward in his seat, moving his right arm as little as possible because each time he does the blood begins flowing again. He has to stop once to throw up, spends maybe twenty minutes slumped heavily out the window, willing himself to dig in and power through the last thirty miles.

When he makes it, when he stumbles in through the side door of Chris's bar and draws four sets of startled eyes to his ashen, shaking appearance, the first thing that comes to mind is: "help."

The first thing that comes to his lips, however, is: "what the fuck are you still doing here?" 

Then he passes out cold. The dry tones of McCoy's voice follow him down.

"It's nice to see you, too, kid."

  


He comes to swinging blindly. At the forefront of his mind: anything that hurts this much must be evil, and therefore must die.

"Goddamn it, I said hold him! Hold! Not in your thoughts, with your hands!"

"Mother*fucker*!" Jim hollers, as pain lances through his torn shoulder in a fiery blaze, tendriling straight up into the base of his skull. He bucks against the hands wrapped around his wrists, his ankles, the arm pressed firmly across his low back. "Let me up, lemme up --"

"Jim!" Soft hands touch his cheeks. He realizes he's lying on a table and hey, there's Uhura, her pretty face grave with concern as she crouches and peers up at him. "Jim. Your hunt, what was it for? What did this?"

Pain explodes again. "Bag," he manages to gasp. "In my -- stop it! -- my bag. I got the skin."

Uhura twists on her heel and is scrambling off before she even straightens up. "Chris?"

"Bring it over here, I can't -- Jim, settle down before I'm forced to sit on you."

Chris's voice, drifting up, tells him who's got his feet. He'd lay money on Spock being the one pinning his arms to the table, then. "Fuck you," he snarls, and keeps fighting. Whatever's happening to his back is sheer torture and he's not okay with it, not after the day he's had. "Stop, stop, *stop*, son of a *bitch!"

"For Christ's -- get him up." McCoy again. "Spock, get him up. Hold him steady."

The pain recedes some. Hands help him sit up and stay up. Jim braces himself against the waves of agony, the nausea they bring about, and blinks slowly at Bones. "Seriously," he says woozily. "What're you doing here?"

"Saving your idiotic life," McCoy snaps, and punches him square in the jaw.

This time Jim's out before he's finished falling.

  


"A loogaroo," Uhura says, the next time he wakes up. He's in a bed, at least, propped carefully on his side with a mountain of pillows piled in front of him to keep him from rolling forward. "Very nice. I'm actually a little impressed."

Jim yawns and decides to worry about getting his bearings later. "I knew it. You think I'm *awesome*."

"Don't celebrate yet," she says with a smile. She stands smoothly from her chair by the bed and leans to kiss his forehead. Her lips are cool on his skin and he wonders if he's hallucinating. Uhura is never this nice to him; that's half the fun of knowing her. "I'd be way *more* impressed if you hadn't let her snack on you."

"Yeah." Jim winces at the memory of jagged teeth sinking into his skin, gnawing him open. "Any chance you'd believe that was all part of my cunning plan?"

"None at all. Sit tight, all right? Leonard said not to let you move. I'll get him."

McCoy. Jim starts to sit up and -- "No, I can -- ah, ah, *fuck*" -- falls right back against the soft cradle propping him up. "Shit. Okay. I'll be right here. But only because I want to be!"

  


  
McCoy comes in within minutes. He's shaved recently, though there's visible shadowing on his jaw, and his clothes are at least cleaner than the last time Jim saw him. He still looks like the world chewed him up and spit him out, but he seems to have taken at least a few steps back from the brink. "Jim. How do you feel?"

"You hit me," Jim accuses.

"Yeah, well, you were being difficult." McCoy pulls a few pillows away so he can sit on the edge of the bed. "Lie flat. Careful, now."

"It *hurt*. You didn't have to hit me." Slowly, he shifts onto his belly and grits his teeth through the ache of forcing his muscles to relax. His skin tingles as he breaks a light sweat. "Totally, completely unnecessary. And it's gotta be against your doctor oath, I'm sure of it."

"Maybe I was trying to take your mind off the pain," McCoy says absently. "Or to get you to shut the hell up. One to ten, how bad is it?"

"My back, or my *jaw*?"

"Be serious for a second, would you? You showed up with infection already setting in. I'm trying to help you."

"I -- seven. It's a seven." Jim tenses a little as McCoy's fingers press gently against a few patches of skin, then probe under his armpit. "So. You're still here."

"Good to know the blood loss didn't impair your observational skills." Fingernails scrape, tug gently at lengths of medical tape. "I figured this was the best place possible to learn what I need to know. Chris hasn't kicked me out yet, so here I am."

"Chris is a fucking sucker with a thing for letting people make their own mistakes. Fuck, McCoy, look at me and tell me you don't get how dangerous this shit is." Jim hisses as McCoy peels back the dressing on his shoulder and does actually look. "You've lost your fucking mind, man."

"Maybe so," McCoy says mildly. "But I've lost everything else, too. Can't really see that my mind matters much, in the balance." He makes a low noise of disapproval. "Damn it all to hell, Jim, the infection's gotten worse."

"So next time I'll ask the bitch to brush before she chows down. Gimme some drugs, I'll be fine."

With a sigh, McCoy recovers his wounds and helps him prop himself up enough to stuff pillows back into place. "Chris has shit for medical supplies, kid. I already gave you the crap he had lying around and it's not working. I'm gonna have to make a few calls, see if I can scrounge something up."

Jim just flaps his hand weakly, disinclined to move the rest of his arm. "Nah, man, just tell Uhura what you need. She'll take care of it -- even if it is for me."

"She got a medical license she hasn't mentioned to me?"

"No, but she's wicked badass at burgling. Like pharmacies, you know?"

"Oh, good lord."

Smashing his face into a pillow, Jim peers at McCoy with one eye. "News flash, dude. You don't get to claim you have the stones for this life and still be a pussy over a little harmless B&E. Mutually exclusive. Did you even think to ask why I came here instead of going to a freaking hospital?"

"You -- go back to sleep, would you? You're a lot more likable when you're unconscious."

"Aww, did I hit a *nerve*?"

"Fuck you. Dare I hope you've had a tetanus shot recently?"

Jim closes his eyes. "Sure, few years ago. Helped this cute little nurse with a poltergeist problem, she hooked me up."

"Let me guess. Insurance fraud was involved."

"And sex," Jim says with a sleepy grin, mostly just to make McCoy groan. "Lots and lots of *really* great sex."

  


He drifts in and out. In his dreams the loogaroo succeeds in getting her skin back from him and dons her wrinkly old face, cackles at him and ignores the rice he flings and flings and flings. She laughs and morphs into the most gorgeous woman he's ever seen, and descends on him flashing sharp teeth dripping with blood.

He wrenches awake with a banshee's cry echoing in his ears and a cold sweat drenching his body. McCoy is slumped in an armchair, asleep. Still there, still alive. He hasn't gone off to do anything stupid yet.

For some reason that soothes Jim's nerves. He doesn't let himself wonder why.

  


  
"So Jim here," Chris says, pointing at Jim with his fork still bearing a piece of steak, "decides it would be a great idea to burn the entire house down."

McCoy, from the chair, shoots him a look of disbelief. For one more night he's refusing to let Jim get up to do more than take a piss, and he's managed to recruit everyone else to his cause. As restless as he is after three days in bed, Jim is going along solely because they've all at least gathered in the tiny room to share mealtime with him. Chris is on his feet by the window, plate balanced in one palm, while Uhura is perched at the end of the bed. Spock sits cross-legged on the floor, looking like he might well touch his thumbs and middle fingers together and start saying "ohm" at any moment.

He'll never admit it, but Jim hopes dinner lasts a long time. "What?" he mumbles at McCoy's expression. "Something in that damn house was anchoring the ghost. I didn't have time to figure out what."

"So you *burned* it? Tell the truth, do you just get off on the wanton destruction of property? It does seem to feature prominently in most of the stories I've heard about you."

Uhura drops her head and shakes with quiet laughter. Spock looks up from his -- lentils, or whatever the hell he's chosen to have instead of steak. "While Jim's exploits have at times indicated a higher than average propensity for excessive damage, I don't believe he receives sexual gratification from it."

"What he's *saying*," Jim puts in defensively, "is that my methods may be extreme but I don't have a *fetish* or anything."

"Yeah," McCoy snorts, "I caught that, thanks."

Jim smiles sunnily at him. "I'll tell you this, too, there hasn't been a single report of unusual activity on the site since I did it. I checked."

"Of course not," Uhura says, rolling her eyes. She reaches and pats Jim's knee like he's a small child needing reassurance. "It was a haunted house. You destroyed the *house*."

"Whatever," he sulks. "It worked, didn't it?" A thought occurs to him and he perks back up. "Plus the Donnelly's got a fucking awesome insurance payout. That's gotta count for something."

McCoy lobs a hunk of bread straight at his face. Jim just catches it and pops it into his mouth, decides being an invalid for a bit isn't so bad after all.

  


"No, you know what? This is useless. You don't know it, you're never going to know it. This. Is. Not. You. No more. No."

Jim shoves out of his chair to go refill his beer. He just manages to contain the automatic wince at the pull in his shoulder as he moves. All the wounds are healing well, McCoy says, but it's taking a bitch of a long time to finish and he's still nowhere near ready to get back to work. Instead he's continuing to idle at the bar, and hell if McCoy isn't taking advantage of that to pick at him for information, for tutorials, for drill sessions on everything he managed to soak up during the weeks Jim was gone and he was hanging around milking Chris's regulars for their knowledge.

"Fine," McCoy practically hollers, his irate tone carrying easily across the bar. "So it's not the bones. How the hell would I kill a wendigo, then?"

"You?" Jim snorts. His concession to his back is to go around the bar instead of just leaning across it to open the tap. "You wouldn't. *You* would be a nice hunk of meat to slice 'n' dice and preserve for winter stores. A wendigo would fucking love you, man."

"Damn it, Jim --"

Jim sets his fresh beer down with a thunk. "Once and for all. *Ghosts*. You burn bones for *ghosts*. Stop guessing it's about the bones for everything!"

"Maybe I would if you'd just tell me what the answer is!"

His head makes just as satisfying a noise, dropping heavily onto the table's surface. "Silver," he groans. "When in doubt, go with silver. Way multipurpose, as elements go. It works on a lot of things if you can figure out how to use it."

"Did you use silver on the loovuroo?"

"Loo*ga*roo, seriously, you have got to stop, you're killing me." Jim lifts his head and stares at McCoy. McCoy, who stomps around the bar every day like the chip on his shoulder weighs a million pounds. McCoy, whose hands are always, always gentle when he checks the progress of Jim's healing. McCoy who won't just fucking give up already so that Jim can rid himself of the sick feeling in his stomach that he doesn't like having over the fate of some random stranger who wandered onto his turf with nothing more than hope and hatred spurring him on. "I can't do this," he says seriously. "I can't be the guy who takes you down this path, okay? Do what you will, but leave me out of it."

McCoy sits back in his chair, eyes Jim pensively. "Fine," he grumbles. "How 'bout this weather, huh? Or hey, seen any good movies lately?"

Jim can't help it; he starts laughing. "I used salt," he admits after a minute. "A loogaroo sheds her skin to go on the prowl for blood. I found it and I took it and I packed it in salt. She found me before she dropped dead, but she still couldn't get to her skin. Probably why she was extra vicious with the biting."

"Least you were nearby," McCoy says quietly. "Still cut it pretty close."

"Yeah, well. That's what I'm trying to get through to you. I made it this time. Someday I'm not going to. That's the way of it."

"Might not be if you had help."

Fuck, but he'd known this would be coming eventually. It's been the writing on the wall, graffiti scrawled out to illustrate McCoy's insatiable appetite for details on things that go far beyond succubi. "No," he snaps. "Not a chance. I don't want help, and I'm not going *to* help. End of story."

McCoy lets it go. For now. "Sure, fine. So burning the bones really only works on ghosts."

Jim sighs and reaches for his beer. "You, my friend, might want to talk to someone about your obsession with bones."

"What the hell do you think I'm doing right now?" McCoy says grumpily.

Jim thinks idly of finding a new bar.

  


  
Two more days. McCoy says he still needs time to heal.

In the middle of the night he packs his bag and slips out silently. He finds McCoy waiting, leaning against the hood of Jim's car with his arms folded and a stony expression on his face. Jim braces himself for an argument.

"Where to?" McCoy says instead, like he's already accepted that Jim won't give in.

Like he's already decided that he won't, either. You pick your battles, Jim knows, at least when you're able to. Try as he might he can't seem to summon up the will to fight this one. He glares for a second before going to cram his duffel into the trunk. "Idaho. Possible werewolf. And don't go mixing up a loup-garou with a loogaroo, either. It's a fucking rookie mistake and I'll toss you out on the side of the road."

"Salt for the loogaroos," McCoy says decisively. "Silver bullets for the werewolves."

Cocking his hand into a mock pistol, Jim makes a quick 'pow-pow' noise. "Got it in one, Bones. Let's motor."


End file.
